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Disable Automatically Reopen Firefox after Windows Restart

Firefox has got support for the Restart Manager of Windows 10, so it will be able to launch itself automatically and restore your previous browsing session. The new feature is already available in the recently released Firefox 61.0.2 but is not enabled by default. Here is how to enable or disable it manually.

The new feature will subsequently land in the stable branch. The Mozilla team is about to enable it by default in Firefox 63. It should improve the user experience by saving time. If you had Firefox running when Windows shuts down or restarts, Firefox will automatically re-open with your previously opened tabs the next time you start Windows. The feature is especially useful for Windows 10 users. This operating system is known for unexpected restarts after installing updates. So, if this happens to you, the browser will be started automatically.

If you are not happy with this behavior, you can disable it as follows.

To disable Firefox starting automatically after Windows Restarts, do the following.

Open a new tab and enter the following text in the address bar:

about:config

Confirm that you will be careful if a warning message appears for you.

Enter the following text in the search box: toolkit.winRegisterApplicationRestart

Set the toolkit.winRegisterApplicationRestart opton to false.

The feature is now disabled. There's no need to restart Firefox.

If you are running Firefox 61 and want to try this feature in action right now, it is possible. The browser includes the mentioned flag, so all you need is to activate it.

Make Firefox Automatically Start after Windows Restart

Open a new tab and enter the following text in the address bar:

about:config

Confirm that you will be careful if a warning message appears for you.

Enter the following text in the search box: toolkit.winRegisterApplicationRestart

Set the toolkit.winRegisterApplicationRestart opton to true.

The feature is now enabled. The changes take effect immediately.

Modern versons of the Firefox browser come with a new user interface, codenamed "Photon", and have a new engine "Quantum". It was a difficult move for developers, because the browser dropped support for XUL-based add-ons completely. All of the classic add-ons were deprecated and incompatible, and only a few moved to the new WebExtensions API. Some of the legacy add-ons have modern replacements or alternatives. Unfortunately, there are plenty of useful add-ons which have no modern analogs. See

About Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer from Russia who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.